1.
Spain
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By population, Spain is the sixth largest in Europe and the fifth in the European Union. Spains capital and largest city is Madrid, other urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Bilbao. Modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 35,000 years ago, in the Middle Ages, the area was conquered by Germanic tribes and later by the Moors. Spain is a democracy organised in the form of a government under a constitutional monarchy. It is a power and a major developed country with the worlds fourteenth largest economy by nominal GDP. Jesús Luis Cunchillos argues that the root of the span is the Phoenician word spy. Therefore, i-spn-ya would mean the land where metals are forged, two 15th-century Spanish Jewish scholars, Don Isaac Abravanel and Solomon ibn Verga, gave an explanation now considered folkloric. Both men wrote in two different published works that the first Jews to reach Spain were brought by ship by Phiros who was confederate with the king of Babylon when he laid siege to Jerusalem. This man was a Grecian by birth, but who had given a kingdom in Spain. He became related by marriage to Espan, the nephew of king Heracles, Heracles later renounced his throne in preference for his native Greece, leaving his kingdom to his nephew, Espan, from whom the country of España took its name. Based upon their testimonies, this eponym would have already been in use in Spain by c.350 BCE, Iberia enters written records as a land populated largely by the Iberians, Basques and Celts. Early on its coastal areas were settled by Phoenicians who founded Western Europe´s most ancient cities Cadiz, Phoenician influence expanded as much of the Peninsula was eventually incorporated into the Carthaginian Empire, becoming a major theater of the Punic Wars against the expanding Roman Empire. After an arduous conquest, the peninsula came fully under Roman Rule, during the early Middle Ages it came under Germanic rule but later, much of it was conquered by Moorish invaders from North Africa. In a process took centuries, the small Christian kingdoms in the north gradually regained control of the peninsula. The last Moorish kingdom fell in the same year Columbus reached the Americas, a global empire began which saw Spain become the strongest kingdom in Europe, the leading world power for a century and a half, and the largest overseas empire for three centuries. Continued wars and other problems led to a diminished status. The Napoleonic invasions of Spain led to chaos, triggering independence movements that tore apart most of the empire, eventually democracy was peacefully restored in the form of a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Spain joined the European Union, experiencing a renaissance and steady economic growth
2.
Madrid
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Madrid is the capital city of the Kingdom of Spain and the largest municipality in both the Community of Madrid and Spain as a whole. The city has a population of almost 3.2 million with an area population of approximately 6.5 million. It is the third-largest city in the European Union after London and Berlin, the municipality itself covers an area of 604.3 km2. Madrid lies on the River Manzanares in the centre of both the country and the Community of Madrid, this community is bordered by the communities of Castile and León. As the capital city of Spain, seat of government, and residence of the Spanish monarch, Madrid is also the political, economic, the current mayor is Manuela Carmena from Ahora Madrid. Madrid is home to two football clubs, Real Madrid and Atlético de Madrid. Madrid is the 17th most liveable city in the according to Monocle magazine. Madrid organises fairs such as FITUR, ARCO, SIMO TCI, while Madrid possesses modern infrastructure, it has preserved the look and feel of many of its historic neighbourhoods and streets. Cibeles Palace and Fountain have become one of the monument symbols of the city, the first documented reference of the city originates in Andalusan times as the Arabic مجريط Majrīṭ, which was retained in Medieval Spanish as Magerit. A wider number of theories have been formulated on possible earlier origins, according to legend, Madrid was founded by Ocno Bianor and was named Metragirta or Mantua Carpetana. The most ancient recorded name of the city Magerit comes from the name of a built on the Manzanares River in the 9th century AD. Nevertheless, it is speculated that the origin of the current name of the city comes from the 2nd century BC. The Roman Empire established a settlement on the banks of the Manzanares river, the name of this first village was Matrice. In the 8th century, the Islamic conquest of the Iberian Peninsula saw the changed to Mayrit, from the Arabic term ميرا Mayra. The modern Madrid evolved from the Mozarabic Matrit, which is still in the Madrilenian gentilic, after the disintegration of the Caliphate of Córdoba, Madrid was integrated in the Taifa of Toledo. With the surrender of Toledo to Alfonso VI of León and Castile, the city was conquered by Christians in 1085, Christians replaced Muslims in the occupation of the centre of the city, while Muslims and Jews settled in the suburbs. The city was thriving and was given the title of Villa, since 1188, Madrid won the right to be a city with representation in the courts of Castile. In 1202, King Alfonso VIII of Castile gave Madrid its first charter to regulate the municipal council, which was expanded in 1222 by Ferdinand III of Castile
3.
Newspaper
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A newspaper is a serial publication containing news about current events, other informative articles about politics, sports, arts, and so on, and advertising. A newspaper is usually, but not exclusively, printed on relatively inexpensive, the journalism organizations that publish newspapers are themselves often metonymically called newspapers. As of 2017, most newspapers are now published online as well as in print, the online versions are called online newspapers or news websites. Newspapers are typically published daily or weekly, News magazines are also weekly, but they have a magazine format. General-interest newspapers typically publish news articles and feature articles on national and international news as well as local news, typically the paper is divided into sections for each of those major groupings. Papers also include articles which have no byline, these articles are written by staff writers, a wide variety of material has been published in newspapers. As of 2017, newspapers may also provide information about new movies, most newspapers are businesses, and they pay their expenses with a mixture of subscription revenue, newsstand sales, and advertising revenue. Some newspapers are government-run or at least government-funded, their reliance on advertising revenue, the editorial independence of a newspaper is thus always subject to the interests of someone, whether owners, advertisers, or a government. Some newspapers with high editorial independence, high quality. This is a way to avoid duplicating the expense of reporting from around the world, circa 2005, there were approximately 6,580 daily newspaper titles in the world selling 395 million print copies a day. Worldwide annual revenue approached $100 billion in 2005-7, then plunged during the financial crisis of 2008-9. Revenue in 2016 fell to only $53 billion, hurting every major publisher as their efforts to gain online income fell far short of the goal. Besides remodeling advertising, the internet has also challenged the business models of the era by crowdsourcing both publishing in general and, more specifically, journalism. In addition, the rise of news aggregators, which bundle linked articles from online newspapers. Increasing paywalling of online newspapers may be counteracting those effects, the oldest newspaper still published is the Gazzetta di Mantova, which was established in Mantua in 1664. While online newspapers have increased access to newspapers by people with Internet access, literacy is also a factor which prevents people who cannot read from being able to benefit from reading newspapers. Periodicity, They are published at intervals, typically daily or weekly. This ensures that newspapers can provide information on newly-emerging news stories or events, currency, Its information is as up to date as its publication schedule allows
4.
Magazine
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A magazine is a publication, usually a periodical publication, which is printed or electronically published. Magazines are generally published on a schedule and contain a variety of content. They are generally financed by advertising, by a price, by prepaid subscriptions. At its root, the magazine refers to a collection or storage location. In the case of written publication, it is a collection of written articles and this explains why magazine publications share the word root with gunpowder magazines, artillery magazines, firearms magazines, and, in French, retail stores such as department stores. By definition, a magazine paginates with each issue starting at three, with the standard sizing being 8 3/8 ×10 7/8 inches. However, in the sense a journal has continuous pagination throughout a volume. Some professional or trade publications are also peer-reviewed, an example being the Journal of Accountancy, academic or professional publications that are not peer-reviewed are generally professional magazines. That a publication calls itself a journal does not make it a journal in the technical sense, magazines can be distributed through the mail, through sales by newsstands, bookstores, or other vendors, or through free distribution at selected pick-up locations. The subscription business models for distribution fall into three main categories. In this model, the magazine is sold to readers for a price, either on a basis or by subscription. Paid circulation allows for defined readership statistics and this means that there is no cover price and issues are given away, for example in street dispensers, airline, or included with other products or publications. Because this model involves giving issues away to unspecific populations, the statistics only entail the number of issues distributed and this is the model used by many trade magazines distributed only to qualifying readers, often for free and determined by some form of survey. This allows a level of certainty that advertisements will be received by the advertisers target audience. This latter model was used before the rise of the World Wide Web and is still employed by some titles. For example, in the United Kingdom, a number of computer-industry magazines use this model, including Computer Weekly and Computing, for the global media industry, an example would be VideoAge International. The earliest example of magazines was Erbauliche Monaths Unterredungen, a literary and philosophy magazine, the Gentlemans Magazine, first published in 1731, in London was the first general-interest magazine. Edward Cave, who edited The Gentlemans Magazine under the pen name Sylvanus Urban, was the first to use the term magazine, founded by Herbert Ingram in 1842, The Illustrated London News was the first illustrated magazine
5.
Sound recording and reproduction
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Sound recording and reproduction is an electrical, mechanical, electronic, or digital inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording technology are analog recording and digital recording, prior to the development of analog recording, there were mechanical systems for reproducing instrumental music, such as wind-up music boxes and later, in the late 19th century, player pianos. Analog sound reproduction is the process, with a bigger loudspeaker diaphragm causing changes to atmospheric pressure to form acoustic sound waves. Digital recording and reproduction converts the sound signal picked up by the microphone to a digital form by the process of digitization. This lets the audio data be stored and transmitted by a variety of media. Whereas successive copies of an analog recording tend to degrade in quality, as noise is added. A digital audio signal must be reconverted to analog form during playback before it is amplified and connected to a loudspeaker to produce sound, long before sound was first recorded on cylinders or records, music was recorded—first by written music notation, then also by mechanical devices. Fowler, this. cylinder with raised pins on the surface remained the device to produce and reproduce music mechanically until the second half of the nineteenth century. The Banu Musa brothers also invented an automatic flute player, which appears to have been the first programmable machine, according to Fowler, the automata were a robot band that performed. more than fifty facial and body actions during each musical selection. In the 14th century, Flanders introduced a mechanical bell-ringer controlled by a rotating cylinder, similar designs appeared in barrel organs, musical clocks, barrel pianos, and musical boxes. A music box is a musical instrument that produces sounds by the use of a set of pins placed on a revolving cylinder or disc so as to pluck the tuned teeth of a steel comb. They were developed from musical snuff boxes of the 18th century, some of the more complex boxes also have a tiny drum and/or bells, in addition to the metal comb. The fairground organ, developed in 1892, used a system of accordion-folded punched cardboard books, the player piano, first demonstrated in 1876, used a punched paper scroll that could store an long piece of music. The most sophisticated of the rolls were hand-played, meaning that the roll represented the actual performance of an individual. This technology to record a live performance onto a piano roll was not developed until 1904, piano rolls were in continuous mass production from 1896 to 2008. A1908 U. S. Supreme Court copyright case noted that, in 1902 alone, the use of piano rolls began to decline in the 1920s although one type is still being made today. The first device that could record actual sounds as they passed through the air was the phonautograph, the earliest known recordings of the human voice are phonautograph recordings, called phonautograms, made in 1857. They consist of sheets of paper with sound-wave-modulated white lines created by a stylus that cut through a coating of soot as the paper was passed under it
6.
Map
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A map is a symbolic depiction emphasizing relationships between elements of some space, such as objects, regions, or themes. Many maps are static, fixed to paper or some other durable medium, although the earliest maps known are of the heavens, geographic maps of territory have a very long tradition and exist from ancient times. The word map comes from the medieval Latin Mappa mundi, wherein mappa meant napkin or cloth, thus, map became the shortened term referring to a two-dimensional representation of the surface of the world. Cartography or map-making is the study and practice of crafting representations of the Earth upon a flat surface, in addition to location information maps may also be used to portray contour lines indicating constant values of elevation, temperature, rainfall, etc. The orientation of a map is the relationship between the directions on the map and the compass directions in reality. The word orient is derived from Latin oriens, meaning East, in the Middle Ages many maps, including the T and O maps, were drawn with East at the top. Today, the most common – but far from universal – cartographic convention is that North is at the top of a map, several kinds of maps are often traditionally not oriented with North at the top, Maps from non-Western traditions are oriented a variety of ways. Old maps of Edo show the Japanese imperial palace as the top, labels on the map are oriented in such a way that you cannot read them properly unless you put the imperial palace above your head. Medieval European T and O maps such as the Hereford Mappa Mundi were centred on Jerusalem with East at the top, indeed, prior to the reintroduction of Ptolemys Geography to Europe around 1400, there was no single convention in the West. Portolan charts, for example, are oriented to the shores they describe, Maps of cities bordering a sea are often conventionally oriented with the sea at the top. Route and channel maps have traditionally been oriented to the road or waterway they describe, polar maps of the Arctic or Antarctic regions are conventionally centred on the pole, the direction North would be towards or away from the centre of the map, respectively. Typical maps of the Arctic have 0° meridian towards the bottom of the page, reversed maps, also known as Upside-Down maps or South-Up maps, reverse the North is up convention and have south at the top. Buckminster Fullers Dymaxion maps are based on a projection of the Earths sphere onto an icosahedron, the resulting triangular pieces may be arranged in any order or orientation. Modern digital GIS maps such as ArcMap typically project north at the top of the map, compass decimal degrees can be converted to math degrees by subtracting them from 450, if the answer is greater than 360, subtract 360. The scale statement may be taken as exact when the region mapped is small enough for the curvature of the Earth to be neglected, over larger regions where the curvature cannot be ignored we must use map projections from the curved surface of the Earth to the plane. Thus for map projections we must introduce the concept of point scale, which is a function of position, although the scale statement is nominal it is usually accurate enough for all but the most precise of measurements. Large scale maps, say 1,10,000, cover relatively small regions in detail and small scale maps, say 1,10,000,000, cover large regions such as nations, continents. The large/small terminology arose from the practice of writing scales as numerical fractions, there is no exact dividing line between large and small but 1/100,000 might well be considered as a medium scale
7.
Postage stamp
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Postage stamp may also refer to a formatting artifact in the display of film or video, Windowbox. A postage stamp is a piece of paper that is purchased and displayed on an item of mail as evidence of payment of postage. Typically, stamps are printed on special paper, show a national designation and a denomination on the front. They are sometimes a source of net profit to the issuing agency, stamps are usually rectangular, but triangles or other shapes are occasionally used. The stamp is affixed to an envelope or other postal cover the customer wishes to send, the item is then processed by the postal system, where a postmark, sometimes known as a cancellation mark, is usually applied in overlapping manner to stamp and cover. This procedure marks the stamp as used to prevent its reuse, in modern usage, postmarks generally indicate the date and point of origin of the mailing. The mailed item is delivered to the address the customer has applied to the envelope or parcel. Postage stamps have facilitated the delivery of mail since the 1840s, before then, ink and hand-stamps, usually made from wood or cork, were often used to frank the mail and confirm the payment of postage. The first adhesive postage stamp, commonly referred to as the Penny Black, was issued in the United Kingdom in 1840, there are varying accounts of the inventor or inventors of the stamp. The postage stamp resolved this issue in a simple and elegant manner, concurrently with the first stamps, the UK offered wrappers for mail. S. Postal service for priority or express mailing, the postage stamp afforded convenience for both the mailer and postal officials, more effectively recovered costs for the postal service, and ultimately resulted in a better, faster postal system. With the conveniences stamps offered, their use resulted in greatly increased mailings during the 19th and 20th centuries, as postage stamps with their engraved imagery began to appear on a widespread basis, historians and collectors began to take notice. The study of stamps and their use is referred to as philately. Stamp collecting can be both a hobby and a form of study and reference, as government-issued postage stamps. The postage for the item was prepaid by the use of a hand-stamp to frank the mailed item. Though this stamp was applied to a letter instead of a piece of paper it is considered by many historians as the worlds first postage stamp. Rowland Hill The Englishman Sir Rowland Hill began interest in postal reform in 1835, in 1836, a Member of Parliament, Robert Wallace, provided Hill with numerous books and documents, which Hill described as a half hundred weight of material. Hill commenced a study of these documents, leading him to the 1837 publication of a pamphlet entitled Post Office Reform its Importance
8.
Printmaking
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Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints that have an element of originality, except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable of producing multiples of the same piece, which is called a print. Each print produced is not considered a copy but rather is considered an original, a print may be known as an impression. Printmaking is not chosen only for its ability to multiple impressions. Prints are created by transferring ink from a matrix or through a screen to a sheet of paper or other material. Screens made of silk or synthetic fabrics are used for the screenprinting process, other types of matrix substrates and related processes are discussed below. Multiple impressions printed from the matrix form an edition. Prints may also be printed in book form, such as illustrated books or artists books, Printmaking techniques are generally divided into the following basic categories, Relief, where ink is applied to the original surface of the matrix. Relief techniques include woodcut or woodblock as the Asian forms are known, wood engraving. Intaglio, where ink is applied beneath the surface of the matrix. Intaglio techniques include engraving, etching, mezzotint, aquatint, planographic, where the matrix retains its original surface, but is specially prepared and/or inked to allow for the transfer of the image. Planographic techniques include lithography, monotyping, and digital techniques, stencil, where ink or paint is pressed through a prepared screen, including screenprinting and pochoir. Other types of printmaking techniques outside these groups include collagraphy and viscosity printing, collagraphy is a printmaking technique in which textured material is adhered to the printing matrix. This texture is transferred to the paper during the printing process, Contemporary printmaking may include digital printing, photographic mediums, or a combination of digital, photographic, and traditional processes. Many of these techniques can also be combined, especially within the same family, for example, Rembrandts prints are usually referred to as etchings for convenience, but very often include work in engraving and drypoint as well, and sometimes have no etching at all. Woodcut, a type of print, is the earliest printmaking technique. It was probably first developed as a means of printing patterns on cloth, woodcuts of images on paper developed around 1400 in Japan, and slightly later in Europe. These are the two areas where woodcut has been most extensively used purely as a process for making images without text, the artist draws a design on a plank of wood, or on paper which is transferred to the wood
9.
Drawing
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Drawing is a form of visual art in which a person uses various drawing instruments to mark paper or another two-dimensional medium. A drawing instrument releases small amount of material onto a surface, the most common support for drawing is paper, although other materials, such as cardboard, plastic, leather, canvas, and board, may be used. Temporary drawings may be made on a blackboard or whiteboard or indeed almost anything, the medium has been a popular and fundamental means of public expression throughout human history. It is one of the simplest and most efficient means of communicating visual ideas, the wide availability of drawing instruments makes drawing one of the most common artistic activities. In addition to its artistic forms, drawing is frequently used in commercial illustration, animation, architecture, engineering. A quick, freehand drawing, usually not intended as a work, is sometimes called a sketch. An artist who practices or works in technical drawing may be called a drafter, Drawing is one of the major forms of expression within the visual arts. It is generally concerned with the marking of lines and areas of tone onto paper/other material, traditional drawings were monochrome, or at least had little colour, while modern colored-pencil drawings may approach or cross a boundary between drawing and painting. In Western terminology, drawing is distinct from painting, even though similar media often are employed in both tasks, dry media, normally associated with drawing, such as chalk, may be used in pastel paintings. Drawing may be done with a medium, applied with brushes or pens. Drawing is often exploratory, with emphasis on observation, problem-solving. Drawing is also used in preparation for a painting, further obfuscating their distinction. Drawings created for these purposes are called studies, there are several categories of drawing, including figure drawing, cartooning, doodling, free hand and shading. There are also many drawing methods, such as drawing, stippling, shading, the surrealist method of entopic graphomania. A quick, unrefined drawing may be called a sketch, in fields outside art, technical drawings or plans of buildings, machinery, circuitry and other things are often called drawings even when they have been transferred to another medium by printing. Drawing as a Form of Communication Drawing is one of the oldest forms of human expression and these drawings, known as pictograms, depicted objects and abstract concepts. The sketches and paintings produced in prehistoric times were eventually stylised and simplified, Drawing in the Arts Drawing is used to express ones creativity, and therefore has been prominent in the world of art. Throughout much of history, drawing was regarded as the foundation for artistic practise, initially, artists used and reused wooden tablets for the production of their drawings
10.
Manuscript
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A manuscript is any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to being mechanically printed or reproduced in some automated way. More recently, it is understood to be a written, typed, or word-processed copy of a work. Before the arrival of printing, all documents and books were manuscripts, manuscripts are not defined by their contents, which may combine writing with mathematical calculations, maps, explanatory figures or illustrations. Manuscripts may be in form, scrolls or in codex format. Illuminated manuscripts are enriched with pictures, border decorations, elaborately embossed initial letters or full-page illustrations. The traditional abbreviations are MS for manuscript and MSS for manuscripts, while the forms MS. ms or ms. for singular, and MSS. mss or mss. for plural are also accepted. The second s is not simply the plural, by an old convention, it doubles the last letter of the abbreviation to express the plural, just as pp. means pages. Before the invention of printing in China or by moveable type in a printing press in Europe. Historically, manuscripts were produced in form of scrolls or books, manuscripts were produced on vellum and other parchment, on papyrus, and on paper. In Russia birch bark documents as old as from the 11th century have survived, in India, the palm leaf manuscript, with a distinctive long rectangular shape, was used from ancient times until the 19th century. Paper spread from China via the Islamic world to Europe by the 14th century, when Greek or Latin works were published, numerous professional copies were made simultaneously by scribes in a scriptorium, each making a single copy from an original that was declaimed aloud. Manuscripts in Tocharian languages, written on leaves, survived in desert burials in the Tarim Basin of Central Asia. Volcanic ash preserved some of the Roman library of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, ironically, the manuscripts that were being most carefully preserved in the libraries of antiquity are virtually all lost. Originally, all books were in manuscript form, in China, and later other parts of East Asia, woodblock printing was used for books from about the 7th century. The earliest dated example is the Diamond Sutra of 868, in the Islamic world and the West, all books were in manuscript until the introduction of movable type printing in about 1450. Manuscript copying of books continued for a least a century, as printing remained expensive, private or government documents remained hand-written until the invention of the typewriter in the late 19th century. In the Philippines, for example, as early as 900AD, specimen documents were not inscribed by stylus and this type of document was rare compared to the usual leaves and bamboo staves that were inscribed. However, neither the leaves nor paper were as durable as the document in the hot
11.
Public library
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A public library is a library that is accessible by the general public and is generally funded from public sources, such as taxes. It is operated by librarians and library paraprofessionals, who are civil servants. There are five fundamental characteristics shared by public libraries, Public libraries exist in many countries across the world and are often considered an essential part of having an educated and literate population. Public access to books is not new, romans made scrolls in dry rooms available to patrons of the baths, and tried with some success to establish libraries within the empire. In the middle of the 19th century, the push for public libraries, paid for by taxes. Public libraries were started with a donation, or were bequeathed to parishes, churches. These social and institutional libraries formed the base of many academic and public collections of today. The establishment of circulating libraries in the 18th century, by booksellers and publishers provided a means of gaining profit, the circulating libraries not only provided a place to sell books, but also a place to lend books for a price. These circulating libraries provided a variety of including the increasingly popular novels. Circulating libraries were not exclusively lending institutions and often provided a place for other forms of commercial activity and this was necessary because the circulating libraries did not generate enough funds through subscription fees collected from its borrowers. As a commerce venture, it was important to consider the factors such as other goods or services available to the subscribers. The Malatestiana Library, also known as the Malatesta Novello Library, is a public library dating from 1452 in Cesena, Emilia-Romagna and it was the first European civic library, i. e. belonging to the Commune and open to everybody. It was commissioned by the Lord of Cesena, Malatesta Novello, the works were directed by Matteo Nuti of Fano and lasted from 1447 to 1452. In the early years of the 17th century, many famous collegiate, norwich City library was established in 1608 and Chethams Library in Manchester, which claims to be the oldest public library in the English-speaking world, opened in 1653. Claude Sallier, the French philologist and churchman, operated an early form of library in the town of Saulieu from 1737 to 1750. He wished to make culture and learning accessible to all people, the Załuski Library was built in Warsaw 1747–1795 by Józef Andrzej Załuski and his brother, Andrzej Stanisław Załuski, both Roman Catholic bishops. The library was open to the public and indeed was the first Polish public library, at the start of the 18th century, libraries were becoming increasingly public and were more frequently lending libraries. The 18th century saw the switch from closed parochial libraries to lending libraries, before this time, public libraries were parochial in nature and libraries frequently chained their books to desks
12.
Paseo de Recoletos
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Paseo de Recoletos is a wide boulevard in central Madrid leading from Plaza de Cibeles to Plaza de Colón. From West to East it consists of, Two southward lanes The pedestrian walk A southward Bus lane Three southward lanes Three northward lanes A median strip lined with trees, flowerbeds, Two nortward lanes A northward Bus lane. By the end of the 18th century architect José de Hermosilla was entrusted by King Charles III to urbanize the area of the old Bajo Abroñigal river and this gave birth to Paseo del Prado as well to Paseo de Recoletos. The name Recoletos was taken from an old convent of Augustinian Recollect friars built in 1592 in the area, the boulevard originally ended in the old Puerta de Recoletos, a baroque gate built under Ferdinand VI in 1756 and dismantled in 1863. During the Peninsular War this gate was fortified to fend off the Napoleonic troops, on 3 December 1808 Napoleon I personally directed the attacks against Madrid from the Fuente Castellana. The Batería de Veterinaria held off the troops that were trying to breach Recoletos Gate to surround the Alcalá Gate defenders, the French troops managed to break through El Retiro, outflanking the gates of Recoletos, Alcalá and Atocha, leading to Madrids capitulation the following day. During the Civil War the statues and fountains along the Paseo de Recoletos and El Prado were hidden under protection sacks, the center part of the boulevard is a pedestrian walk, lined with gardens, trees, statues, fountains and varied street furniture. The first and largest stretch of the boulevard has a row of eight ponds lined with white double doric columns, the ponds, which are lighted at night, are situated one slightly above the next one, forming tiny water falls in between. The first and last of these ponds have little jet fountains, the Terraza Recoletos and an Equatorial Sundial are nearby. The second and shortest stretch contains the Café Gijón, an historic literary café founded in 1888 with an outdoor terraza on the boulevard, on the fourth and last stretch is the Café El Espejo, another quaint café with an impressive glass pavilion influenced by Art Nouveau. It also has a monument dedicated to Spanish author Juan Valera and one of his best known works, Pepita Jiménez, a statue of Ramón del Valle-Inclán and a drinking fountain. Near the northern corner of the stretch is the entrance to an underground passage leading to the eastern median strip of the boulevard. This tunnel appears in Carlos Sauras film Taxi and this strip is divided into four stretches, the same as the pedestrian walk. The other three stretches are lined with trees, bushes and ornamental flowerbeds, and a path for pedestrians, the pedestrian walk is lined with stands several times a year, The Feria del Libro Antiguo y de Ocasión, held in April/May. The Feria de Artesanía, held during Christmas period, the Feria del Libro Viejo y Antiguo, held in Autumn. A Feria del Disco Antiguo y de Ocasión was held every Spring between 2000 and 2005 but the Town Hall denied permission in 2006. Paseo de Recoletos is also used as a temporary exhibition place. This exhibition is completed with five pieces in Paseo del Prado by the same artist
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Media related to Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid at Wikimedia Commons
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